The X-Files

The first time I ever saw real porn—filthy stuff, not National Geographic pictorials—I was 12. My sister and I found a dirty magazine in the street, and, after looking around to make sure no one had seen us pick it up, we ran home and proceeded to pore over the pictures—fullon nudity, penetration, even a water-sports shot. To us the stuff was practically radioactive, and we were petrified to be caught with it. Plus, we knew that girls weren’t supposed to like dirty pictures. Trouble was, we did. We were fas- cinated by images of things we’d never seen  before and admitted to each other that they made us feel…kind of funny. So to avoid getting busted, we hid the mag in a bucket at the top of a tree, which we climbed for months afterward so we could look at our prized smut.

Of course, this was in the ’80s, and we were kids. In recent years, thanks to porn’s widespread availability online, the number of women ogling pervy pics—from the comfort of their homes, not perched in a tree—has skyrocketed. A 2007 Nielsen/NetRatings survey revealed that one in three users of online porn were female. Smut, it seems, has ceased being a man’s game. And now that we’ve joined in, some of the rules have changed. In fact, these days pretty much everything you thought you knew about women and porn is wrong.

Myth #1: Women hate filth.

One of the long-held beliefs  about gender and pornography is that women dig lushly written erotica by the likes of Anaïs Nin, while guys go for graphic pictures or videos of buxom, waxed blondes (and the occasional brunette!) strenously engaged in a variety of acts ranging from the Pile Driver to the Reverse Mambo. It’s an idea that’s dying a fast death in the age of  voluminous Internet porn—especially the new genre of free, user-generated sites like YouPorn and XTube. Both feature walls of thumbnail screen-grabs from their video libraries with quick, helpful descriptions. (“Ridin’ and cummin’,” anyone?) And for those who want to cut right to the chase, each site has a Google-like search field. God bless instant access! “I was always curious about porn, but I never would have walked into a seedy video store and passed a copy of Edward Penishands to the person behind the counter,” says Nina,* 26. “On YouPorn and XTube, I can search for everything from lesbian to anal to all-Asian-amputee porn and decide what I like in the privacy of my own home—no eye contact with another human necessary, thank goodness.”

The other key to the appeal of these sites is authenticity. “Amateur porn on XTube can sometimes be a bit freaky, but it’s so much better than watching real porn stars, who are all spray-tanned a nuclear shade of orange and have melon boobs that look like they’re about to burst,” explains Kelly, 27. “Instead, it’s real couples who are actually into each other, with no lame story lines. Just straight-up sex.” Bottom line: When we know people are being paid to whimper and grunt and put their mouths every place imaginable—rather than doing it because they actually want to—it makes the whole enterprise pretty unsatisfying. But regular joes who are just that horny…well, we can actually relate.

Myth #2: Women won’t watch porn regularly.

It’s fair to say that the average woman isn’t risking her job by checking the Goddess Post every day at work. But when it comes to how frequently we look at porn, it’s definitely more than you think. “I watch it all the time,” says Sarah, 32. “I find it inspiring. It’s a big part of my self-seduction routine. I do it less when I have a boyfriend, but when I’m single, it’s a few times a week.” Jill, 30, says, “I do it most often  when I come home drunk looking for a little solo action. I’ll get in bed with my vibe and my laptop and flip on the YouPorn. It helps me come super quickly.” And Molly, 28, also uses porn to get herself in the mood, on average three times a week. “I live alone, so it’s easy to get into it,” she explains. “I tend to watch it more on the weekends, when I have time to devote to really getting off well.” Other girls confessed to peeping naughty downloads anywhere from a couple of times a month to several times a day.

Of course, you’d never know we use smut this much, because we do our best to hide it. Truth is, even though we’re in the midst of a porn revolution, many of us still feel uncomfortable with the idea that we’re into this stuff as much as we are. That attitude likely stems from the fact that we’re shielded from pornography when we’re young. “Finding a stack of  porn under your 12-year-old son’s bed is kind  of cliché, but finding a stack of porn under your 12-year-old daughter’s bed would make most people freak,” notes Anne Semans, marketing director for famed sex shop Babeland, which has locations in Los Angeles, Seattle, and New York. Likewise, when women grow up and  learn about the wonderful world of filth, they’re still not going to brag to friends that they  spent the evening with a pack of Twizzlers, a vibe, and a copy of Sperms of Endearment.

No matter how hard we try to cover our tracks, though, we still slip up now and again. Nicole, 25, was once busted by her mom after a visit home. “I’d Googled ‘two-sided dildo’ on my parents’ computer like an idiot, and all of a sudden all these nasty hardcore sites started popping up like crazy—graphic images of huge penises, money shots, double penetration, the works. I was horrified and closed all the windows, but I didn’t clear the history. I found out weeks later that my mom used the Internet right after me, and all the same windows popped up uncontrollably. She called my sister and asked if I had a pornography fetish.” And I’ll never forget the story of a girlfriend whose parents’ friends used her apartment once while she was out of town. She returned to find she’d left a hardcore flick in the DVD player, which they’d kindly placed on top of the TV for her. The title? Ass Fingers.

Myth #3: Women don’t like kink.

Conventional wisdom holds that women like softly lit pornos featuring romantic story lines and tender lovemaking. And occasionally that may be true. But with the anonymity of the Net, we’re also more than willing to explore content that goes far beyond standard sex. Many straight women, in fact, enjoy watching lesbian action, precisely because it’s not regular guy-girl sex. “Straight porn is typically just bang-bang-bang, without the guy caring if the woman gets off,” says Mayumi, 31. “With two girls, I know they’re making each other feel good.” Adds Molly, “I don’t like when it’s a guy just railing a girl from behind and her boobs are flying around, because that’s not how I actually get off. In girl-on-girl there’s a lot of oral, and I’m sure another girl would know exactly what to do down there.”

Does that mean lots of women are closet lesbians? Hardly. While men might choose porn that mirrors what they want to do in real life, many women do the opposite—we use it as a vehicle for indulging our fantasies, from themildly kinky to the truly depraved. With porn, we can cross lines we’d never dream of crossing in the real world. “I’m into anything that explores taboo power dynamics, like teacher and student or daddy and the baby-sitter,” says Susie, 29. “I love the idea of sex between people who aren’t supposed to have sex.” Even a fairly common sex act like anal is something many girls enjoy seeing more than doing. “I would never tell my boyfriend that I get so turned on by watching anal, because he’d try to convince me that I actually want it when I seriously don’t,” says Laurel, 28. “I think the idea of it is hot, but in real life it’s too painful.”

Some women’s fantasies are freakier and even more explicit. “I get turned on watching one woman go down on two guys,” says Nina. “I definitely have no real urge to have two penises in my mouth at once. It’s just so dirty that I  find it hot. But a boyfriend would have a tough time grasping that—I wouldn’t want him thinking I want to give blow jobs to every guy I meet.” One girl who has a fetish for orgy and gangbang videos explains the distinction between fantasy and reality this way: “My thing with gang-bangs is they remind me of freer times, like the ’60s, or even the days of Roman orgies, when all that mattered was getting off. We have so many sexual nerve endings; to have them all touched at once seems like it would feel incredible. That said, because of safe sex issues and me being too uptight, I’ll never actually do it. Plus, what if you go to one and all the people are fat and ugly like on Real Sex?” Women are smart enough to know that there are few fantasies, when acted out, that could live up to what exists in our minds—or on our laptops. Dream orgy: smooth-skinned, well-endowed young bucks who tend to our every sexual desire. Real orgy: a bunch of gray-pubes whose wangs are hidden underneath sagging bellies. Sad, but true.

Then there are girls who are into things they couldn’t possibly do in real life, like Jess, 27, who loves hentai, a bizarre and bizarrely popular genre of animated porn from Japan. “It’s totally over-the-top, like cartoon women having sex with monsters, but because it’s animated, it’s not gross to me,” she explains. “I don’t want to see a human fucking a tree stump, but in cartoon form it’s actually hot—less graphic and more fantastical.” And when the characters getting busy are drawn, there are no body flaws or sexual problems. Is a cartoon girl going to have trouble fucking that tree stump because she’s having a bout of vaginal dryness? No way.

Perhaps most surprising, many straight women confessed to being turned on by gay male porn, though theories as to why vary. Tabitha, 28, who says gay sex is her favorite thing to watch, pins the appeal on “the idea of seeing a man being controlled or dominated.” Nina, on the other hand, likes watching men give in to what she thinks is “their ultimate taboo—something they’re afraid of.” Stephen Braveman, a sex therapist based in Monterey, California, suggests a reason that might be the most obvious: “Women like gay porn because no women are being objectified in those videos.” Maybe, after watching scene after scene of women being poked and prodded, a total absence of females comes as something of a relief once in a while.

Myth #4: Women don’t want to watch porn with you.

On the contrary, most women I spoke to said they’d happily watch X-rated films with their boyfriends, noting that they think it would be a great tool for hotter, more adventurous sex. Steph, 27, says that when she watched porn with her boyfriend, it inspired them to try new positions. “We’d watch, and he’d whisper something like, ‘We can do that better,’ ” she recalls. “And so we would. It also gave me new ideas; I never would’ve thought to touch a guy’s balls while I was going down on him, but I did after I saw a girl doing it  in a film. My boyfriend said it was the best he’d ever had.” In fact, according to a 2004 MSNBC survey of more than 15,000 people, 35 percent of women who said they liked porn claimed it gave them “more ways to look or act sexy.” And 26 percent said it helped them feel more comfortable telling their partners what they want. One girl even told me she likes to watch it before her boyfriend comes over because it gets her excited about the sex she’ll be having with him.

But if you’re going to attempt to introduce porn into your relationship, the key is not to spring it on us out of nowhere. “My college boyfriend used to try to get me to watch porn with him, but never by asking me or having a discussion about what we liked,” says Nicole. “Instead, he would cue up one of his hardcore DVDs before I came over, and then, as we were making out, grab the remote and hit Play. It  was so cheesy. And he’d have it so the people would be midact, like the girls would be screaming and getting fucked every which way, when we were just kissing. What was that supposed to do for me?” And if your idea of a turn-on doesn’t exactly match hers, you could be in for a big fight instead of a night of unbridled passion. “My ex had one porno of a super young girl getting DPed by two guys, and when we watched it he told me how much he wanted to see that happen to me,” says Kelly. “I was so disgusted that I called it quits soon after.”

Another rule of thumb: Don’t talk about how hot the girl is in the video. Ever. Remember, we’re turned on the most by real-looking people who remind us of ourselves. So if we find out your ideal is an impossibly skinny chick with balloon boobs and a bleached anus, we’re going to feel pretty inadequate. Unless, that is, you actually want to spend some quality time alone with your gently used copy of Will He Bonk Ya in the Chocolate Factory?